Roast Dinners in London

The Lord Gravy goes to The Lord Southampton, on the Sunday before Christmas. In Kentish Town…ish.

Merry Christmas…you redacted redacteds.

So we all got the early Christmas present that we wanted – irrefutable proof that Epstein was a paedophile, and we can now see that only radical leftists like Bill Clinton were connected to him and that we can now move on from the Epstein files.

Except a few unfortunate people that occasionally associated with Epstein like Diana Ross and Donald Trump, but clearly there needs be no chain reaction.

Maybe let’s pretend she didn’t name a track “Love Child”.

The Lord Scunthorpe

Anyone know what you are getting me for Christmas?

There’s obviously many things you could consider buying me – like an infinite supply of good gravy.

You could subscribe to this nonsense on Substack – I actually have a paid subscriber now…like someone is paying for this blurb of bullshit written when I have such a lovely hangover.

But you know what I really want for Christmas?

I want a membership to Liz Truss’s members club. Only £500,000. Can you imagine the prestige this would bring me?

Liz Truss is back. The short-lived UK prime minister and businessman Robert Tchenguiz are launching an ultra-exclusive club in London.Truss and Tchenguiz are hoping to recruit 700 founding members — each paying £500,000. Find out more here: on.ft.com/493H1hI

— Financial Times (@financialtimes.com) 2025-12-11T17:47:33.572505Z

Fine, I’ll just accept a marriage proposal from a hot Spanish woman as my Christmas present instead.

An introduction will do. Maybe just send me a photo of a hot Spanish woman. Or just send some thoughts and prayers of another year in the completely voluntarily honestly celibacy club.

The Lord Sunderland

Gosh I’m redactedly hungover this morning. Shall we get on with the review? Probably not, but hey.

So The Lord Southampton was recommended to me by two separate people this year.

It’s a newly refurbished pub, and looks rather gorgeous inside – all wood panelling and dark green wallpaper, proper tables and chairs – though rather toasty inside too.

But first I had to get there. And the Northern line had other ideas.

I was intending on getting there early, getting a beer, settling in. But approaching Camden Town, the train stopped.

“We are just waiting here at a red signal, shouldn’t be waiting too long”.

A few minutes passes…like an unusual amount of minutes for there to be nothing wrong ahead.

The Lord Merthyr Tydfil

“We should only be held up a few more minutes, they are just doing an inspection of the points ahead”.

This doesn’t sound like it is just going to be a few more minutes.

The lights go off.

“They’ve just switched off the electricity whilst they work on the points ahead, it shouldn’t take too much longer”.

I sat down on the floor. I had visions of everyone being stuck on the Northern line, and our table being unavailable once we arrived…there is no 4G down there at that point.

Time continues to pass. No announcements.

A good 30 or so minutes had passed – I started to wonder if I was going to miss the roast dinner altogether.

Do you want to see Andrew Tate punched? Yes, yes you do.

Merry redacted Christmas you redacted misogynist redacted redacted redacted redacted. Finally, I have an appreciation of boxing.

The Lord Dumbarton

The lights came back on, the driver announced that we’d be on our way. I would have a roast dinner after all.

Beef or chicken were the options – priced at £24.00 and £23.00 respectively. The beef looked stunning on Google Maps, so that’s what I chose.

They did also offer a mushroom and celeriac wellington, at £18.00, should you be that way inclined. As I may well need to be come Let’s Lose The 87kg I’ve Put On This Month Dry January.

This is how the roast dinner arrives at The Lord Southampton, along with a massive redacted gravy boat, of which my photograph is blurry, but trust me when I say that have stopped the small boats here at The Lord Southampton.

Plus we ordered sides of pigs in blankets, and cauliflower cheese:

Because…it’s Christmas!

Lord Slough

You know what, because it’s Christmas, I’m going to start with the gravy.

I fucking love gravy. I redactedly love gravy. I want to pour gravy on the nipples of a hot Spanish woman one Christmas and…yeah maybe this should be redacted also. If I had more time then I would maybe add some proper redacted styles, but please accept this AI image of Donald Trump as Miss Piggy instead because this is easier and I currently have a stonking hangover, and half the fucking redacted pages on my website don’t seem to work right now and redacted knows that the redacted I did.

Yeah, seriously – I have a paid subscriber for this nonsense. Granted I do spend thousands every year on this, and quite possibly some pages have broken because I’m using twice the resources that Vercel allow me so maybe I should actually upgrade my hosting.

And maybe I should talk about carrots. They were quite on the crunchy side. Did I tell you the story about the tube train getting stuck and me fearing I’d miss this roast dinner and instead be in one of those news stories about people being trapped underground for hours and having to walk along the tracks?

I should probably really remind you what I’m talking about:

Anyway, the carrots were a bit too crunchy for my tastes.

Likewise the parsnips were a little undercooked, though had good levels of flavour coming out. There was a shallot too.

Lord Hartlepool

Red cabbage annoys the redacted out of me, as it gets everywhere on the plate, and steals the gravy. Have I mentioned how much I loved the gravy at The Lord Southampton?

Anyway, somehow the red cabbage was the best vegetable on the plate. Like the winter spice mix seemed to be missing the more irritating components, it had a really good balance of sweetness with almost dreams of mulled wine.

Cauliflower cheese, which we ordered as a side, was gooey and creamy – not especially cheese-flavoured but looked the part with the melted cheese on top, the cauliflower was soft and it was a really hearty feel. It feels like Diana Ross probably has a song about it.

The roast potatoes were on their way to being perfect, but just needed a bit longer in the oven. They know what they are doing, clearly – they were quite crispy on the outside, quite soft on the inside, and one suspects they can do perfect roast potatoes.

These weren’t quite there, alas.

The Yorkshire pudding was good. At first it seemed on the dry side, and it likely had been sat around a while – but there was loads of gravy to soften it up.

And then when you combine the beef, yorkie and gravy to get that magical trifecta of redacted roast dinner joy – yowsers. It banged.

So the beef itself was tender, partly on the medium-rare side, though one slice was quite on the medium side of things, some seasoning – just a very nice cut of beef rump.

Lord Kingston-Upon-Hull

Compliments tended to be stronger from those eating the chicken – I’m told it was very tender with loads of flavour, plus it came with cooked garlic. Oh my. Maybe I missed out there.

I’m told the vegan wellington was an 11/10 (yeah, and she’s an accountant). It does look decent to be fair.

Oh don’t forget the sides of pigs in blankets, which came with apple ketchup – so, yeah I’ve just had ketchup on a roast dinner for the first time in my redacted life, were of good standard. Maybe the sausage was a tad undercooked but the bacon was perfect, both were of solid upbringing.

Can I mention the gravy again? The gravy was delicious. It came in a large boat, and there was absolutely no quibble when we asked for extra. A thick, proper meat stock kinda gravy – the type that northerners dream of, the type that I want to redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted with hot Spanish women. Oh my. Best gravy of 2025? You’ll find out by September 2026 when I finish my roast dinner awards for 2025.

And you probably won’t read it anyway.

Did you even read this? Possibly…it is do fuck all work week. You might as well read my whole blog…at least the bits that are working anyway. What the hell have I done?

The Lord Southampton

Well, it’s always a relief when a large group roast dinner gets a lot of praise – and The Lord Southampton deserves it.

There wasn’t anything really wrong at all. Sure, I’d have liked the vegetables a little softer, perhaps with a tad more flavour – but then again, some people like crunchy vegetables. I’d have liked the roast potatoes to have been roasted a bit longer…yeah I’m struggling for bad words.

That said, only the gravy was on award-winning territory. Everything else was good or very good.

Service was delightful, they were really lovely – it might be useful if they had a telephone or checked their e-mails a little more often when trying to change the booking, but we got there in the end. Well, I nearly didn’t get there – but that was TfL’s doing.

Good drinks too – I was happy with DEYA’s Steady Rolling Man, there was a cask beer for less than £5.00 – so I was told. I enjoyed my Rioja, others complimented their wines, both white and red. Plus the pub is pretty damn gorgeous.

Scores around the table – both the veggie/vegan accomplices scored it an 8.50 out of 10, both very complimentary about the wellington, less so about the vegetables themselves.

Those eating the chicken tended to give the highest scores, an 8.00, an 8.80, an 8.90 and a 9.20 (though she lives in USA now so has probably forgotten what good roast dinners are, and still expects me to visit despite my social media feed).

And those eating the beef scored it an 8.50, a 9.00, with an 8.40 from my regular accomplice. And I’m scoring it an 8.36 – the 5th best roast dinner of 2025.

Merry redacted Christmas, folks.